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Takoma celebrates 30 years of House and Garden Tours

BY DIANA KOHN

On Sunday May 2nd, nearly a dozen residents of Takoma will open their front doors for the 30th annual house and garden tour. Founding father B. F. Gilbert would be proud.

Back when he came up with the idea of a suburban haven in the rural countryside at the edge of Washington DC, he would bring prospective buyers out on the train and show them the houses already built. These were the days of grand Victorians, set back on wide lots. Many of the early settlers bought double or triple lots, and only two or three houses stood on each side of a block.

Gilbert had an artist do pen and ink drawings of the houses for his promotional brochure. (Ironically, the only house among those depicted which is no longer standing is Gilbert’s own house—arguably the most eccentric Victorian of the bunch—lost to fire in 1913.) Two of the earliest settlers were contractors who built houses for a living and were responsible for much of the early construction. Gilbert even offered lodging to new landowners while they waited for their houses to be completed. The Cady Lee was just one of many large Victorians that eventually lined the railroad route.

The first group of Adventists arrived in 1904 and put up more houses on the opposite end of town near their Sanitorium on Sligo Creek. More newcomers arrived to fill the spaces in between. They favored smaller bungalows, especially since Sears (and others) made it easy to purchase bungalow kits from their catalog. You could order everything you needed—from shingles to doorknobs; all the lumber, nails, wiring, and pipes arrived conveniently at the local railroad station just up the street. The only catch was that you had to assemble the house yourself. Many homebuyers ended up hiring contractors for the job.

Meanwhile, there was lots of room for gardens. Benjamin Morrison, of National Arboretum fame, was one of many who created mini-arboretums in their backyards. Morrison’s extensive experiments with azaleas created dozens of new varieties which overflowed into all the neighboring yards.

Families grew up and moved away and new families arrived. Trains were more and more infrequent and Takoma remained a quiet neighborhood slightly off the beaten path. The original houses, though becoming shabby, remained intact.

Then in the late 1960s, vocal Takoma activists succeeded in stopping the 10-lane Northcentral Freeway’s advance through the center of the town. It marked the beginning of the fight between "development" and the "community." The City Council as well as Montgomery Community College favored tearing down old houses in the name of "progress." Who cared about all these old houses anyway?

Ellen Marsh cared. As she remembers, "these were the days before bungalows were fashionable. Many of the turn-of-the-century houses didn’t even have names for their architectural style." She decided it was important to let people see how well-loved these houses were. Along with friends Mary Anne McGuire and Belle Ziegler, she convinced 30 neighbors to open their houses on a Sunday afternoon in May. The first House and Garden Tour, and a springtime tradition, was born.

Thirty years later, the ideas of "development" and "community" again seem headed for collision as new construction plans come into conflict with residents’ vision of their neighborhood. In the spirit of that first tour, Historic Takoma offers a collection of houses, showcasing large, small, old, and new, among the varied architecture that makes Takoma unique. The houses also reflect Gilbert’s original community—expanding out from the railroad station, taking no heed of the District Line, and creating neighborhoods in both DC and Maryland. Early residents considered themselves one community regardless of which side they lived on, and this attitude continued long after the Takoma Park half was incorporated as a city in Maryland. Today, as Historic Takoma marks its 25th anniversary, it welcomes members from both DC and Maryland in its efforts to preserve the community Gilbert envisioned.

House and Garden Tour tickets go on sale for $12 in mid-April at local stores (not available at the Municipal Building this year). If you wait until May 2 to buy tickets, they will be $15. Join us between 1 and 5 p.m. and sample the eclectic houses of the Takoma community while celebrating spring.